#051 Three ways to procrastinate like a Pro
Apollo's face swells as he screams across the ring:
"THERE IS NO TOMORROW!"
Released in 1982, when I watch Rocky III, sometimes I think I was born in the wrong era. A deflated Rocky shrugs in the ring as tells his training partner that they will train properly tomorrow.
Apollo's philosophical ring rage aside, tomorrow never does come - except for one instance in your life, when the guy with the cloak and scythe turns up.
"Procrastinate" comes from the Latin prefix pro-, meaning "forward," and crastinus, "of tomorrow." Thankfully for Rocky, Apollo's warning about procrastination did eventually make it past those cauliflower ears.
At the moment work is piling up as I'm in the middle of my next creative project. Tens of thousands of words demand birth and I catch myself procrastinating every day.
When I've been sitting down to write I've been acting as though tomorrow is coming, rainbow and all. And with tomorrow's rainbow, everything I plan to put off today will spontaneously take its perfect multi-coloured arrangement.
We both know this isn't true.
So here are three ways to procrastinate well. No ring rage required.
Lower your standards
Writer's block is a specific form of procrastination - but even this inhibition turns out to have a creative source – high standards.
Listen to poet William Stafford:
"I believe that the so-called 'writing block' is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance ... One should lower his standards until there is no felt threshold to go over in writing. It's easy to write. You just shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing."
No standards. What could be more liberating? The impediment to action is often our ideal outcome. For the writer, it is the perfect words laid out on the page. For the project procrastinator, it's doing a perfect job straight away. Neither is living in reality and both are crippled by their projections.
So drop your standards - at least to get started - then tidy up after you've gathered steam.
Rehearse
A teacher of writing named Donald Graves began to notice that even little children engage in the process of mental preparation. He discovered that the best young writers rehearsed what they wanted to say. Put simply, productive authors write stories in their heads.
When you're sitting staring at the scenery, instead of constructing the impending presentation, stop daydreaming about the election and start dreaming about your presentation.
Turn the components around in your head - this part first, then that, perhaps actually I should reverse the order to make more sense...
View this delay period not as something destructive, but constructive. Turn procrastination into rehearsal. This way each act of procrastination becomes a time of planning and preparation.
Talk it out
Forget your brain for a while and start talking. More specifically, start talking about the work you are putting off. Record yourself using an AI tool like Vnote that will turn your sloppy speech into structured prose. It won't be perfect, but you will have something that you can chop and change to get you going.
Punch procrastination in the face.
We're all Rocky in life's ring, facing our personal Apollos. Remember: there is no tomorrow.
Lower your standards. Rehearse in your head. Talk it out. But above all, act. Now.
Your future isn't some distant opponent. It's here, demanding your best shot. So give it.
No fancy footwork, just clean, direct action.
That's how you win this fight.
p.s. If you found these steps to punch procrastination in the face useful, I can help you out some more.
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